The new seller app allows merchants to sign up on the platform directly from the app, unlike in the past where it would have to be done through a website.Priyanka Sangani | ET Bureau | February 09, 2016, 16:34 IST

Online payment solutions company PayUMoney has seen a significant increase in the number of merchant registrations after upgrading its seller app in January this year.

The new seller app allows merchants to sign up on the platform directly from the app, unlike in the past where it would have to be done through a website.

Abhishek Tripathi, head- SMB, PayUMoney said, "We onboarded over 10,000 new merchants in January this year, of which 20% were through the app." This was a new feature introduced in the app which until then only gave merchants access to the seller tools the company offers.

This is a significant leap as compared to an average of 6500 new registrations towards the end of last year. Tripathi added that the company did not count new merchants as registered until they had undertaken at least one transaction using the platform. The company intends to add about 12000 merchants this month.

"Our focus is on finding new ways of onboarding merchants onto our platform. Of the 51 million SMBs in India, about 10 million are tech ready, and for them online options are fine. To reach out to the rest, we introduced a 1800 toll-free number where people could give us a missed call and we'd help them sign up on the platform," he said. The company currently has a merchant base of 1.5 lakh and is working at expanding that over the course of this year.

In August 2015, the company had launched its app with a suite of tools that enabled merchants to undertake transactions like SMS invoicing, email invoices etc. These are free tools and merchants only pay two per cent of the transaction cost as payment gateway charges when they actually make a sale.